AVI STEINHARDT/Courier-Post Bishop Joseph A. Galante talks on his cell phone in his office after a news conference in Camden on Thursday. He will be installed as the Diocese of Camden's seventh bishop today.

Camden diocese leader says coming home `feels wonderful'

By JIM WALSH
Courier-Post Staff
CAMDEN

The new leader of South Jersey's Catholic community on Thursday repeated his vow to learn by listening, but Bishop Joseph A. Galante also spoke out to admonish the state's governor and to fault the church's treatment of sex-abuse victims.

Galante, 65, who will be installed today as the seventh bishop of the Camden Diocese, also said he hopes to remain in the post for the rest of his life.

"I've packed my bags enough," said the Philadelphia native, who has kept a summer home in North Wildwood even as he's spent the past 17 years in Rome and at three dioceses in Texas.

"It feels wonderful (to come home)," said the bishop, an avid sports fan who sipped water from a Philadelphia Eagles tumbler.

At a wide-ranging news conference, Galante said he plans to meet with priests of the diocese over the next two weeks. "Listening sessions" will be held later at every parish.

"Priorities need, for the most part, to flow up from the people," he said.

Galante also said he was willing to meet with victims of clergy sex abuse, a stand that was praised by an advocate for that group.

"We are very encouraged by what he is saying," said Barbara Polesir of Cherry Hill, South Jersey director for The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests. "I am preparing a letter to ask him to meet with us."

In his remarks, Galante chastised Gov. James E. McGreevey, who last week said church officials were wrong to tell Catholic politicians not to support abortion rights. McGreevey said he loved his Catholic faith, but that he felt a moral obligation to govern "in a democratic, civil, inclusive society."

The governor "can't have it both ways," Galante said.

"Your faith has to influence and color your personal life," the bishop said. "He (McGreevey) says he's a Catholic. He didn't use an adjective in front of it. He didn't say he's a good Catholic."

McGreevey was not available for comment. He is not expected to attend today's ceremony at St. Agnes Church in Blackwood, said spokesman Micah Rasmussen.

Galante, who has served as spokesman for sex-abuse issues for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said church officials in the past decade have acted to remove pedophile priests and to prevent future abuse.

But he said church officials were too slow to recognize the emotional impact of sex abuse upon victims. "The victim and the family, how do you repair that damage?" asked Galante, who called inattention to victims' suffering "the greatest failure."

Galante previously was the second-ranking cleric in the Diocese of Dallas. He now will oversee more than 458,000 Catholics in six South Jersey counties. JOSEPH A. GALANTE